Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Truth Hurts

WARNING: You are smaller than you appear to be in the mirror of your ego.

Humility has been haunting me. It's this week's Single Frame Stories prompt. Strange thing is, my initial reaction was a yawn. No spark. No inspiration. Nothing. It's not an issue I've thought about much before outside of the Buddhist concept of Bodhicitta. Nor one that particularly bothered me in other people. But since I was committed to the process, I plugged on.

My first go was a typical snarky comic on social network celebrity, poking fun at both my own occasionally Klout-inflated sense of worth and our culture's obsession with celebrity. Cheap shots both.

The challenge's obligation was fulfilled. I could move on to juicier issues. But I woke up the next morning with humility on my mind. A half dozen threads of thought were dancing just beyond reach. I turned to The Church of the Blank Page, opened up Tweetr and started transcribing. I didn't much like what came out:

"I understand humility like I know juggling. I like the idea, but never practiced enough to keep going for more than a minute at a time."

I experience the world as if I'm the center of the universe. The importance of my personal interests are vastly inflated. The edge of my wit seems razor sharp and perfectly on target, while my concern for others ebbs and flows on a whim. I know it's not real, but that's how it feels. The world that I see revolves around me.

The next dagger was even more painful, because it attacked the illusion that my constant creative expression was an enlightening activity:

"I often misuse my creativity as a defense mechanism to shield myself from intimate engagement with life."

Fuck! Where did that come from? Truth hurts.

There nothing wrong with quick and witty sketches. Or satire. Or naughty fun. But living on junk food isn't healthy. It doesn't nourish. Its pleasure is short. It stunts healthy growth. It makes you fat. It deadens the senses. My infatuation with wit is undermining my quest for wisdom. Looks like I'm in for a contemplative holiday weekend.